Insect Stories from the Field

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Tag Archives: Braconidae

One morning as I was preparing my lunch before school, I noticed something attached to a spinach leaf. It looked like a small tan rounded egg of some sort. Closer inspection revealed something very funny–an aphid mummy! These are the hollowed out exoskeletons of aphids, created by the larva of a parasite that had devoured the aphid’s internal organs. I was familiar with aphid mummies, having seen them many a time on aphid-infested plants outdoors, but to find one on a piece of spinach from the market was worth a good laugh. I tossed it in a vial and headed off to school.

Aphid mummy on spinach. The only locality information I have is from the packaging, which simply stated “Product of USA”. So this aphid and its associated parasite could be from almost anywhere in the country.

Later that day I decided to get a few shots of the aphid mummy. As I was photographing it I noticed that there was no hole in it, and there was a suspicious-looking dark area inside. What if, despite all odds, there was still life inside? I decided to keep it on the off chance that the parasite might still be inside. Turns out I didn’t have long to wait. The very next day I was excited to spot a 2-mm long wasp walking around in the container. As expected, the aphid mummy now had a large circular hole cut in it where the wasp had emerged. I photographed the wasp and posted it to BugGuide, where Ross Hill quickly determined it as a member of the subfamily Aphidiinae (Hymenoptera: Braconidae), which specialize in parasitizing aphids.